Posts Tagged ‘children of God’

In an online Facebook discussion between evangelicals and Mormons, an evangelical gave a link to my 2014 article on IRR’s website, “The Mormon Doctrine of Becoming Gods: What about the Early Church Fathers?” A Mormon named Christopher took issue with the article, beginning with the following claim:

One of the less impressive arguments Bowman makes in his critical article is in his section of “becoming sons of God”. Obviously this approaches the biblical concept of adoption by/into God. But here Bowman is using a modern interpretation of the term (either deliberately or ignorantly).

This comment was odd because in fact I didn’t offer any “interpretation of the term” adoption, modern or ancient or otherwise. The word adoption appears only once in my article, in a quotation from Irenaeus—who was of course an ancient author and so could not be accused of “using a modern interpretation of the term”! The article also has no section on “becoming sons of God.” The term sons occurs only three times in the article: twice in a quotation from Justin Martyr, and once in my comment on Justin’s statement, in which I said:

Furthermore, according to Justin, we are not already God’s children (as the LDS Church teaches), but may become his sons. What Justin teaches here is incompatible with the LDS doctrine that we were God’s preexistent children in heaven and that we came here to make progress toward “growing up” to become full-fledged Gods like our Heavenly Father.

Instead of engaging what I did say on the subject, Christopher erected a straw man of his own invention in which I supposedly used “a modern interpretation of the term” adoption. Read the rest of this entry »